Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina flooding tragedy and to make sure that people don’t forget it about the massive devastation that affected so many people on the Gulf Coast, we would like to remind people how important it is to tink about ways to improve home and landscape design so that something like this never happens again.

Despite the social and political factors involved in the 2005 disaster, we can’t help but think that if the urban landscape and individual houses had been better designed, we never would have had such a massive problem in the first place. There are many design solutions to tackle the problems of hurricanes, flooding, and displacement, and we’ve spent the last two year covering as many of them as we could: hurricane-resistant houses, flood-resistant houses, rebuilding competitions, and temporary shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In case you missed any of it, here’s a recap:

New Orleans had been warned for quite some time of the danger, the inability of their levees to withstand a storm as strong as Katrina, and the potential deaths that would result if the warnings went unheeded. The warnings went unheeded. I primarily hold city management to blame.

Infrastructure as a means to implement a concept for a building is the way to go when battling such extreme site/context conditions for architecture. Check this link to see Mies van der Rohe’s solution for the Fransworth house in action with last weeks midwest flooding: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1425/1270903067_38a1ccdd66.jpg?v=0

HmmmmmAugust 29, 2007 at 3:57 pm

In all honesty this will happen again and again. The key is what is learned and changed for the next event. The Katrina Cottage vs the FEMA trailer? Builindg below sea level or on piers? Levee design and wetlands values…. Florida learned a lot form Andrew. Let’s hope the lessons from Katrina are implemented as well.